Battle of Kirchohsen

The Battle of Kirchohsen (April 1945) occurred when the US 2nd Armored Division was sent to secure the small town of Kirchohsen (now in the Emmerthal municipality of Lower Saxony, Germany). The division was ambushed by Hitler Youth soldiers along the main road, losing a tank, and it was later sent to assist a platoon that was pinned down in a beet field. After relieving the infantry, the armored column (now down to four tanks) and the infantry took the town of Kirchohsen after facing some resistance, taking several child soldier prisoners of the Hitler Youth and Volkssturm prisoner before executing their Waffen-SS commander.

Battle
A 5-tank US 2nd Armored Division column was sent to advance towards the town of Kirchohsen to support a US Army infantry assault on the tenacious German defenders. The tanks passed by streams of refugees and surrendering Wehrmacht soldiers who were marching towards the American forward base, and they were ambushed by Hitler Youth boys with panzerfaust anti-tank launchers along the road, leading to the destruction of the lead tank and the death of the column's commanding officer. Staff Sergeant Don Collier, the commander of the tank Fury, took command of the column as it moved into an American-held village nearby. The local commander ordered Collier and his column to rescue a platoon of troops who had been pinned down by enemy fire in a beet field, and he warned Collier that there were several anti-tank gun positions; all of his scouts had been killed, so the tanks would be flying blind. Collier set the march order as Fury, Old Phyllis, Lucy Sue, and Murder, Inc., and the tanks moved with an infantry escort to relieve the men at the beet field. The tanks came under machine-gun and anti-tank fire from the treeline, so the tanks "squirted" the treeline with machine-gun and shell fire, destroying the anti-tank guns and killing several German soldiers. Collier forced his new bow gunner Norman Ellison execute a German prisoner-of-war in order to "harden him up", literally putting the gun in his hand and pulling the trigger with him.

Afterwards, the tanks continued their advance towards Kirchohsen, entering the town itself. An elderly German man was asked to point to where the German defenders were, and he raised his black umbrella towards the Hotel Prinz-Karl; he was then killed by an enemy sniper shot. The American gunners proceeded to destroy the hotel's face with fire, blowing a hole where the window was, and killing the German soldiers. The tanks and infantry advanced together, and the tanks blasted a doorway where a German machine-gunner had taken up a position. The Americans proceeded to negotiate the surrender of the young Volkssturm boys and girls who were defending the town (with the help of a burgermeister), and Collier had one of his men execute a Waffen-SS officer who had been responsible for hanging children who refused to fight. The Americans also discovered the dead bodies of several Nazi Party members in the town hall; the Nazis had gotten drunk and shot themselves in the morning when they discovered that the Americans were approaching. The American troops then settled down in the wartorn town, with some soldiers having relations with local German women (Fury Corporal Trini Garcia and Pfc. Grady Travis had a moment with a prostitute in the tank, while Collier and Ellison stayed with two German cousins, Ellison falling in love with the younger cousin, Emma). The Americans were then sent to take the crossroads near Hagenohsen from the Germans in order to protect 1,000 nurses and rear-echelon personnel and supply routes from attack, and they left the town for their next objective. However, the Germans bombarded the town as the tankers mounted up, killing both soldiers and innocent civilians (including Emma and her cousin, whose house was buried in rubble).